urges the astronomical objection to the | no limits-why does he not also shoot truth of Christianity, is only looking with half an eye to the principle on which it rests. Carry out the principle, and the objection vanishes. He looks abroad on the immensity of space, and tells us how impossible it is, that this narrow corner of it can be so distinguished by the attentions of the Deity. Why does he not also look abroad on the magnificence of eternity; and perceive how the whole period of these peculiar attentions, how the whole time which elapses between the fall of man and the consummation of the scheme of his recovery, is but the twinkling of a moment to the mighty roll of innumerable ages? The whole interval between the time of Jesus Christ's leaving his Father's abode, to sojourn among us, to that time when he shall have put all his enemies under his feet, and delivered up the kingdom to God, even his Father, that God may be all in all; the whole of this interval bears as small a proportion to the whole of the Almighty's reign, as this solitary world does to the universe around it, and an infinitely smaller proportion than any time, however short, which an earthly monarch spends on some enterprise of private benevolence, does to the whole walk of his public and recorded history.

Why, then, does not the man, who can shoot his conceptions so sublimely abroad over the field of an immensity that knows

them forward through the vista of a succession, that ever flows without stop and without termination? He has burst across the confines of this world's habitation in space, and out of the field which lies on the other side of it, has he gathered an argument against the truth of revelation. I feel that I have nothing to do but to burst across the confines of this world's history in time, and out of the futurity which lies beyond it, can I gather that which will blow the argument to pieces, or stamp upon it all the narrowness of a partial and mistaken calculation. The day is coming, when the whole of this wondrous history shall be looked back upon by the eye of the remembrance, and be regarded as one incident in the extended annals of creation, and with all the illustration and all the glory it has thrown on the character of the Deity, will it be seen as a single step in the evolution of his designs; and long as the time may appear, from the first act of our redemption to its final accomplishment, and close and exclusive as we may think the attentions of God upon it, it will be found that it has left him room enough for all his concerns, and that on the high scale of eternity, it is but one of those passing and ephemeral transactions, which crowd the history of a never-ending administration.

DISCOURSE V.

On the Sympathy that is felt for Man in the Distant Places of Creation. "I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons which need no repentance."-Luke xv. 7

I HAVE already attempted at full length to establish the position, that the infidel argument of astronomers goes to expunge a natural perfection from the character of God, even that wondrous property of his, by which he, at the same instant of time, can bend a close and a careful attention on a countless diversity of objects, and diffuse the intimacy of his power and of his presence, from the greatest to the minutest and most insignificant of them all. I also adverted shortly to this other circumstance, that it went to impair a moral attribute of the Deity. It goes to impair the benevolence of his nature. It is saying much for the benevolence of God, to say, that a single world, or a single system, is not enough for it-that it must have the spread of a mightier region, on which it may pour forth a tide of exuberancy throughout all its provincesthat as far as our vision can carry us, it has

strewed immensity with the floating receptacles of life, and has stretched over each of them the garniture of such a sky as mantles our own habitation-and that even from distances which are far beyond the reach of human eye, the songs of gratitude and praise may now be arising to the one God, who sits surrounded by the regards of his one great and universal family.

Now, it is saying much for the benevolence of God, to say that it sends forth these wide and distant emanations over the surface of territory so ample, that the world we inhabit, lying imbedded as it does amidst so much surrounding greatness, shrinks into a point that to the universal eye might appear to be almost imperceptible. But does it not add to the power and to the perfection of this universal eye, that at the very moment it is taking a comprehensive survey of the vast, it can fasten a steady and undistracted

attention on each minute and separate portion | throughout all its dwelling places. Put this of it; that at the very moment it is looking at trait of the angelic character into contrast all worlds,it can look most pointedly and most with the dark and lowering spirit of an infiintelligently to each of them: that at the very del. He is told of the multitude of other moment it sweeps the field of immensity, worlds, and he feels a kindling magnificence it can settle all the earnestness of its regards in the conception, and he is seduced by an upon every distinct hand-breadth of that elevation which he cannot carry, and from field; that at the very moment at which it this airy summit does he look down on the embraces the totality of existence, it can insignificance of the world we occupy, and send a most thorough and penetrating in- pronounces it to be unworthy of those visits spection into each of its details, and into and of those attentions which we read of in every one of its endless diversities? You the New Testament. He is unable to wing cannot fail to perceive how much this adds his way upward along the scale, either of to the power of the all-seeing eye. Tell me, moral or of natural perfection; and when then, if it do not add as much perfection to the wonderful extent of the field is made the benevolence of God, that while it is ex-known to him, over which the wealth of patiating over the vast field of created things, the Divinity is lavished-there he stops, and there is not one portion of the field over- wilders, and altogether misses this essential looked by it; that while it scatters blessings perception, that the power and perfection over the whole of an infinite range, it causes of the Divinity are not more displayed by them to descend in a shower of plenty on the mere magnitude of the field, than they every separate habitation: that while his are by that minute and exquisite filling up, arm is underneath and round about all which leaves not its smallest portions neworlds, he enters within the precincts of glected; but which imprints the fulness of every one of them, and gives a care and a the Godhead upon every one of them; and tenderness to each individual of their teem- proves, by every flower of the pathless deing population. Oh! does not the God, who sert, as well as by every orb of immensity, is said to be love, shed over this attribute of how this unsearchable being can care for all, his its finest illustration, when, while he sits and provide for all; and, throned in mystery in the highest heaven, and pours out his ful- too high for us, can, throughout every inness on the whole subordinate domain of stant of time, keep his attentive eye on every nature and of providence, he bows a pitying separate thing that he has formed, and by an regard on the very humblest of his chil- act of his thoughtful and presiding intellidren, and sends his reviving Spirit into every gence, can constantly embrace all. heart, and cheers by his presence every home, and provides for the wants of every family, and watches every sick-bed, and listens to the complaints of every sufferer; and while by his wondrous mind the weight of universal government is borne, oh! is it not more wondrous and more excellent still, that he feels for every sorrow, and has an ear open to every prayer?

"It doth not yet appear what we shall be," says the apostle John, "but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." It is the present lot of the angels, that they behold the face of our Father in heaven, and it would seem as if the effect of this was to form and to perpetuate in them the moral likeness of himself, and that they reflect back upon him his own image, and that thus a diffused resemblance to the Godhead is kept up among all those adoring worshippers who live in the near and rejoicing contemplation of the Godhead. Mark then how that peculiar and endearing feature in the goodness of the Deity, which we have just now adverted to-mark how beauteously it is reflected downwards upon us in the revealed attitude of angels. From the high eminences of heaven, are they bending a wakeful regard over the men of this sinful world; and the repentance of every one of them spreads a joy and a high gratulation

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But God, compassed about as he is with light inaccessible, and full of glory, lies so hidden from the ken and conception of all our faculties, that the spirit of man sinks exhausted by its attempts to comprehend him. Could the image of the Supreme be placed direct before the eye of the mind, that flood of splendour, which is ever issuing from him on all who have the privilege of beholding, would not only dazzle, but overpower us. And therefore it is, that I bid you look to the reflection of that image, and thus to take a view of its mitigated glories, and to gather the lineaments of the Godhead in the face of those righteous angels, who have never thrown away from them the resemblance in which they were created; and, unable as you are to support the grace and the majesty of that countenance, before which the sons and the prophets of other days fell, and became as dead men, let us, before we bring this argument to a close, borrow one lesson of Him who sitteth on the throne, from the aspect and the revealed doings of those who are surrounding it.

The infidel, then, as he widens the field of his contemplations would suffer its every separate object to die away into forgetfulness: these angels, expatiating as they do over the range of a loftier universality, are represented as all awake to the history of each of its distinct and subordinate provin

And here I cannot omit to take advantage of that opening with which our Saviour has furnished us, by the parables of this

ces. The infidel, with his mind afloat among | ment. I now make my appeal to the sensisuns and among systems, can find no place bilities of your heart; and tell me, to whom in his already occupied regards, for that does the moral feeling within it yield its humble planet which lodges and accommo- readiest testimony-to the infidel, who dates our species; the angels, standing on a would make this world of ours vanish away loftier summit, and with a mightier prospect into abandonment-or to those angels, who of creation before them, are yet represented ring throughout all their mansions the hoas looking down on this single world, and sannas of joy, over every one individual of attentively marking the every feeling and its repentant population? the every demand of all its families. The infidel, by sinking us down to an unnoticeable minuteness, would lose sight of our dwelling-place altogether, and spread a dark-chapter, and admits us into a familiar view ening shroud of oblivion over all the concerns and all the interests of men; but the angels will not so abandon us; and undazzled by the whole surpassing grandeur of that scenery which is around them, are they revealed as directing all the fulness of their regard to this our habitation, and casting a longing and benignant eye on ourselves and on our children. The infidel will tell us of those worlds which roll afar, and the number of which outstrips the arithmetic of the human understanding-and then with the hardness of an unfeeling calculation, will he consign the one we occupy, with all its guilty generations, to despair.

of that principle on which the inhabitants of heaven are so awake to the deliverance and the restoration of our species. To il lustrate the difference in the reach of knowledge and of affection, between a man and an angel, let us think of the difference of reach between one man and another. You may often witness a man, who feels neither tenderness nor care beyond the precincts of his own family; but who, on the strength of those instinctive fondnesses which nature has implanted in his bosom, may earn the character of an amiable father, or a kind husband, or a bright example of all that is soft and endearing in the relations But he who counts the number of the of domestic society. Now, conceive him, stars, is set forth to us as looking at every in addition to all this, to carry his affections inhabitant among the millions of our spe- abroad, without, at the same time, any cies, and by the word of the Gospel beck- abatement of their intensity towards the oning to him with the hand of invitation, objects which are at home-that stepping and on the very first step of his return, as across the limits of the house he occupies, moving towards him with all the eagerness he takes an interest in the families which of the prodigal's father, to receive him are near him—that he lends his services to back again into that presence from which the town or the district wherein he is placed, he had wandered. And as to this world, and gives up a portion of his time to the in favour of which the scowling infidel will thoughtful labours of a humane and publicnot permit one solitary movement, all hea- spirited citizen. By this enlargement in the ven is represented as in a stir about its re- sphere of his attention he has extended his storation; and there cannot a single son or reach; and, provided he has not done so at a single daughter be recalled from sin unto the expense of that regard which is due to his righteousness, without an acclamation of family-a thing which, cramped and conjoy among the hosts of paradise. Aye, and fined as we are, we are very apt, in the exI can say it of the humblest and the un-ercise of our humble faculties, to do-I put worthiest of you all, that the eye of angels is upon him, and that his repentance would at this moment, send forth a wave of delighted sensibility throughout the mighty throng of their innumerable legions.

it to you, whether, by extending the reach of his views and his affections, he has not extended his worth and his moral respectability along with it?

But I can conceive a still further enlargeNow, the single question I have to ask, ment. I can figure to myself a man, whose is, On which of the two sides of this con- wakeful sympathy overflows the field of his trast do we see most of the impress of hea- own immediate neighbourhood-to whom ven? Which of the two would be most the name of country comes with all the glorifying to God? Which of them car- omnipotence of a charm upon his heart, ries upon it the most of that evidence which and with all the urgency of a most righteous lies in its having a celestial character? For and resistless claim upon his servicesif it be the side of the infidel, then must all who never hears the name of Britain our hopes expire with the ratifying of that sounded in his ears, but it stirs up all his fatal sentence, by which the world is doom- enthusiasm in behalf of the worth and the ed, through its insignificancy, to perpetual welfare of its people who gives himself exclusion from the attentions of the God- up, with all the devotedness of a passion, head. I have long been knocking at the to the best and purest objects of patriotism door of your understanding, and have tried-and who, spurning away from him the to find an admittance to it for many an argu- vulgarities of party ambition, separates his

life and his labours to the fine pursuit of | tions of cast and of colour, and spreads its augmenting the science, or the virtue, or ample regards over the whole brotherhood the substantial prosperity of his nation. of the species-a philanthropy, which atOh! could such a man retain all the ten- taches itself to man in the general; to man derness, and fulfil all the duties which home throughout all his varieties: to man as the and which neighbourhood require of him, partaker of one common nature, and who, and at the same time expatiate, in the might in whatever clime or latitude you may meet of his untired faculties, on so wide a field with him, is found to breathe the same of benevolent contemplation-would not sympathies, and to possess the same high this extension of reach place him still high-capabilities both of bliss and improvement. er than before, on the scale both of moral and intellectual gradation, and give him a still brighter and more enduring name in the records of human excellence?

And lastly, I can conceive a still loftier flight of humanity—a man, the aspiring of whose heart for the good of man, knows no limitations-whose longings, and whose conceptions on this subject, overleap all the barriers of geography-who, looking on himself as a brother of the species, links every spare energy which belongs to him with the cause of its melioration-who can embrace within the grasp of his ample desires the whole family of mankind-and who, in obedience to a heaven-born movement of principle within him, separates himself to some big and busy enterprise, which is to tell on the moral destinies of the world. Oh! could such a man mix up the softenings of private virtue with the habit of so sublime a comprehension-if, amid those magnificent darings of thought and of performance, the mildness of his benignant eye could still continue to cheer the retreat of his family, and to spend the charm and the sacredness of piety among all its members -could he even mingle himself, in all the gentleness of a soothed and a smiling heart, with the playfulness of his children—and | also find strength to shed the blessings of his presence and his counsel over the vicinity around him;-oh! would not the combination of so much grace with so much loftiness, only serve the more to aggrandize him? Would not the one ingredient of a character so rare, go to illustrate and to magnify the other? And would not you pronounce him to be the fairest specimen of our nature, who could so call out all your tenderness, while he challenged and compelled all your veneration?

Nor can I proceed, at this point of my argument, without adverting to the way in which this last and this largest style of benevolence is exemplified in our own country-where the spirit of the Gospel has given to many of its enlightened disciples the impulse of such a philanthropy, as carries abroad their wishes and their endeavours to the very outskirts of human population-a philanthropy, of which, if you asked the extent or the boundary of its field, we should answer, in the language of inspiration, that the field is the world-philanthropy, which overlooks all the distinc

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It is true that upon this subject, there is often a loose and unsettled magnificence of thought, which is fruitful of nothing but empty speculation. But the men to whom I allude have not imagined the enterprise in the form of a thing unknown. They have given it a local habitation. They have bodied it forth in deed and in accomplishment. They have turned the dream into a reality. In them, the power of a lofty generalization meets with its happiest attemperament in the principle and perseverance, and all the chastening and subduing virtues of the New Testament. And, were I in search of that fine union of grace and of greatness, which I have now been insisting on, and in virtue of which the enlightened Christian can at once find room in his bosom for the concerns of universal humanity and for the play of kindliness towards every individual he meets with-I could no where more readily expect to find it, than with the worthies of our own land— the Howard of a former generation, who paced it over Europe in quest of the unseen wretchedness which abounds in it; or in such men of our present generation as Wilberforce, who lifted his unwearied voice against the biggest outrage ever practised on our nature, till he wrought its extermination; and Clarkson, who plied his assiduous task at rearing the materials of its impressive history, and at length carried, for this righteous cause, the mind of Parlia ment; and Carey, from whose hand the generations of the East are now receiving the elements of their moral renovation, and, in fine, those holy and devoted men, who count not their lives dear unto them; but, going forth every year from the island of our habitation, carry the message of heaven over the face of the world; and in the front of severest obloquy are now labouring in remotest lands; and are reclaiming another and another portion from the wastes of dark and fallen humanity; and are widening the domains of gospel light and gospel principle among them; and are spreading a moral beauty around the every spot on which they pitch their lowly tabernacle; and are at length compelling even the eye and the testimony of gainsayers, by the success of their noble enterprise; and are forcing the exclamation of delighted surprise from the charmed and arrested traveller, as he looks at the softening tints which they are now

spreading over the wilderness, and as he may be brought to meet the infidelity we hears the sound of the chapel bell, and as in have thus long been employed in combatthose haunts where, at the distance of half ing. It was nature, and the experience of a generation, savages would have scowled every bosom will affirm it-it was nature upon his path, he regales himself with the in the shepherd to leave the ninety and nine hum of missionary schools, and the lovely of his flock forgotten and alone in the wilspectacle of peaceful and christian villages. derness, and betaking himself to the mounSuch, then, is the benevolence, at once so tains, to give all his labour and all his congentle and so lofty, of those men, who, cern to the pursuit of one solitary wansanctified by the faith that is in Jesus, have derer. It was nature; and we are told in had their hearts visited from heaven by a the passage before us, that it is such a porbeam of warmth and of sacredness.-What tion of nature as belongs not merely to men then, I should like to know, is the benevo- but to angels; when the woman, with her lence of the place from whence such an in- mind in a state of listlessness as to the nine fluence cometh? How wide is the compass of pieces of silver that were in secure custody, this virtue there, and how exquisite is the feel- turned the whole force of her anxiety to the ing of its tenderness, and how pure and how one piece which she had lost, and for which fervent are its aspirings among those unfal- she had to light a candle, and to sweep the len beings who have no darkness and no en-house, and to search diligently until she cumbering weight of corruption to strive found it. It was nature in her to rejoice against? Angels have a mightier reach of more over that piece, than over all the rest contemplation. Angels can look upon this of them, and to tell it abroad among friends world, and all which it inherits, as the part and neighbours, that they might rejoice of a larger family. Angels were in the full along with her-aye, and sadly effaced as huexercise of their powers even at the first in- manity is, in all her original lineaments, this fancy of our species, and shared in the gra- is a part of our nature, the very movements tulations of that period, when at the birth of which are experienced in heaven, "where of humanity all intelligent nature felt a there is more joy over one sinner that regladdening impulse, and the morning stars penteth, than over ninety and nine just persang together for joy. They loved us even sons who need no repentance." For any with that love which a family on earth bears thing I know, the very planet that rolls in to a younger sister; and the very childhood the immensity around me may be a land of of our tinier faculties did only serve the righteousness; and be a member of the more to endear us to them; and though household of God; and have her secure born at a later hour in the history of crea- dwelling-place within that ample limit, tion, did they regard us as heirs of the same which embraces his great and universal fadestiny with themselves, to rise along with mily. But I know at least of one wanderer; them in the scale of moral elevation, to bow and how wofully she has strayed from at the same footstool, and to partake in those peace and from purity; and how in 'dreary high dispensations of a parent's kindness and alienation from him who made her, she has a parent's care, which are ever emanating bewildered herself among those many defrom the throne of the Eternal on all the vious tracts, which have carried her afar members of a duteous and affectionate fami- from the path of immortality; and how sadly. Take the reach of an angel's mind, but, ly tarnished all those beauties and felicities at the same time take the seraphic fervour of are, which promised, on that morning of her an angel's benevolence along with it; how existence when God looked on her, and from the eminence on which he stands he saw that all was very good-which promay have an eye upon many worlds, and a mised so richly to bless and to adorn her; remembrance upon the origin and the suc- and how in the eye of the whole unfallen cessive concerns of every one of them; how creation, she has renounced all this goodlihe may feel the full force of a most affect-ness, and is fast departing away from them ing relationship with the inhabitants of into guilt, and wretchedness, and shame. each, as the offspring of one common Fa-Oh! if there be any truth in this chapter, ther; and though it be both the effect and the and any sweet or touching nature in the evidence of our depravity, that we cannot principle which runs throughout all its pa sympathise with these pure and generous rables, let us cease to wonder, though they ardours of a celestial spirit; how it may who surround the throne of love should be consist with the lofty comprehension, and looking so intently toward us-or though the everbreathing love of an angel, that he in the way by which they have singled us can both shoot his benevolence abroad over out, all the other orbs of space should, for a mighty expanse of planets and of systems, one short season, on the scale of eternity, and lavish a flood of tenderness on each appear to be forgotten-or though for every individual of their teeming population. step of her recovery, and for every indiKeep all this in view, and you cannot fail to perceive how the principle, so finely and so copiously illustrated in this chapter

vidual who is rendered back again to the fold from which he was separated, another and another message of triumph should be